When Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight he unwittingly ignited a wave of popular uprisings and rebellions that have spread like wildfire across North Africa and the Middle East, the heat of which can be felt as far afield as Zimbabwe where, on Saturday 19th February, 46 pro-democracy activists including students, workers and trade unionists were arrested in Harare. According to police documents they were arrested for plotting an Egypt-style revolt to overthrow Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, at a meeting to discuss the fall of Hosni Mubarak and events in North Africa and the Middle East.

The arrested, who represent the Zimbabwean Federation of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZNSU) and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), had just watched documentary news footage on the uprising in Egypt and, according to state prosecutors, were there to "organise, strategise and implement the removal of the constitutional government of Zimbabwe ... the Egyptian way".

The North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) condemns the Federal Bureau of Investigations' raids on anti-war and anti-colonial organizers, which began the morning of Friday, September 24th in the Twin Cities and Chicago, and the intimidation of organizers across the country.

As one of the FBI's main strategies has been to divide movements for change into small ineffectual factions, we call on our brothers and sisters of all radical, revolutionary, and progressive backgrounds to come together in the streets and in front of FBI offices to demonstrate unity in the face of this repression. We will protest these aggressions as if they were committed against our own membership.

Following the murderous attack by the Israeli Defence Forces on the civilian convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the beseiged Gaza Strip, an Israeli anarchist writes from Tel Aviv on the reactions to the attacks by the Israeli left.

"We knew it would not be nice, but we could not guess how brutal and mindless it would be. We had planned and prepared during the weeks and when the time was known,- we prepared for reciprocal actions. The surprise and the shock we experienced when got the news on the piracy on the high sea of Israel - in international waters - about 150 kilometers from the shore of Gaza, cannot be described."